A startling discovery has been made in a study by researchers at UCI, which pertains to a rare side-channel risk associated with high-performance optical mice. The study found that the sensors and polling rates that enable precision can also be used as clandestine acoustic detectors.
Known as Mic-E-Mouse, the technique involves reconstructing nearby speech from the minute vibrations that are recorded by sensors in mice with a DPI rating over 20,000; by applying advanced signal-processing pipelines and machine-learning enhancements, the research team proved that recognizable speech and intelligible audio could be recovered from raw data collected by mice packets.
A critical aspect of the attack is that it requires only a vulnerability on the host computer that can be accessed through the use of high-frequency mouse readings-a capability readily found in many creative applications, games, and even seemingly benign web interfaces-before the harvested packets can be exfiltrated and processed off-site using the exploitation of high-frequency mouse readings.
Considering that top-tier gaming mice have become increasingly affordable, the findings highlight a widening attack surface in everyday consumer hardware and underscore how manufacturers and security teams must consider reevaluating their assumptions about peripheral trust and data exposure for everyday consumer hardware.
This article has been indexed from CySecurity News – Latest Information Security and Hacking Incidents
Read the original article: